Sallah's Mordekaiser: A Full Guide

ITS READY. Pretty much anyway.
---------------------

Mordekaiser, the Master of Metal


Contents of Guide:

1- Skillset
2- Runes/Masteries/Summoner Skills/Skill Order
3- Playstyle
4- Item Build
5- Videos and Links

---------------------------
1 - Skillset
---------------------------

Passive - Iron Man (Innate): 25% of the damage dealt from abilities is converted into a temporary shield, absorbing incoming damage. Minimum shield strength is 140 health, and the maximum is 650 health. The shield decays by 3% per second.

This ability is what makes Mordekaiser unique and is by far the most awesome passive in game.
With a decent number of creeps around you can almost instantly recharge it to full which is a huge injection of essentially free health (think lasting Sion-esque absorbtion shield that deteriorates slowly over time).

Q - Mace of Spades(Active): On next hit, Mordekaiser swings his mace with such force that it echos out, striking up to 3 additional nearby targets, dealing damage. If the target is alone, the base damage is doubled.
Area of Effect: 600
Cooldown: 8 / 7 / 6 / 5 / 4 seconds
Cost: 30 / 35 / 40 / 45 / 50 Health
Magic Damage: 20 / 40 / 60 / 80 / 100 (+ attack damage)

A decent farming tool but not something to be over-emphacised. It helps recharge your shield but the extra damage output is at best something helpful to pick up jungle creeps a tiny bit faster and nothing to brag about.

W - Creeping Death (Active): Unleashes a protective cloud of metal shards to surround an ally, increasing their armor and magic resistance and dealing magic damage per second to enemies in the cloud for 6 seconds.
Range: 750
Area of Effect:250
Cooldown: 20 / 18 / 16 / 14 / 12 seconds
Cost: 26 / 32 / 38 / 44 / 50 Health
Armor & Magic Resist: 10 / 15 / 20 / 25 / 30
Magic Damage: 16 / 32 / 48 / 64 / 80 (+0.15 per ability power)

Early on this has a LONG cooldown that is a tad annoying but as soon as you get it up to lvl 3/4 it becomes one of the most awesome skills ever. The damage it actually does to everything around is frankly ridiculous. Creeping, its awesome. As armor and MR buffing, it's a very nice boost. And its a skill, that you can keep up a great deal of the time on you or even your carry. Plain awesome.

E - Siphon of Destruction (Active): Mordekaiser damages enemies in a cone in front of him, dealing magic damage. For each unit hit, Mordekaiser's shield absorbs additional health.
Cooldown: 6 seconds
Range: 700
Cost: 24 / 36 / 48 / 60 / 72 Health
Magic Damage: 65 / 110 / 155 / 200 / 245 (+0.4 per ability power)
Additional Shield Health: 6 / 9 / 12 / 15 / 18 per unit hit

Mordekaiser's bread and butter. This is the ability that will keep your shields topped off the whole game single handedly. Because of the double shield generation from this + the shield gen from the damage it deals (which is substancial) you end up getting a full shield if used on give or take 5 or more targets at once. The cooldown is really nice and short and it deals a truckload of dmg.

R - Children of the Grave (Active): Mordekaiser curses an enemy champion for 8 seconds, stealing life. If the target dies while under the effect of the curse, their soul is enslaved and will follow Mordekaiser for 30 seconds. During this time, Mordekaiser gains quarter of their ability power, and attack damage. The spirit gains a percentage of Mordekaiser's adjusted damage, ability power, and health totals.
No cost
Cooldown: 120 / 105 / 90 seconds
Life Stolen: 3 / 3.5 / 4 % (+0.1% per 50 Ability Power) life per second
Spirit Percentage: 65 / 75 / 85 %
Range: 850

Great skill. Actually does comparably little damage to what people think. The damage is health % based so ofc if you use it on a feasted Chogath it will actually tick for sizable chunks. Anyway, the pet you get gets all of the On-Hit effects Mordekaiser has; red buff, Frozen Mallet, etc.

A key point to note about this skill is the RANGE. 850 is super long range.
No need to be right next to someone for this which means that you can get a pet off anything you like in a teamfight as long as it dies in the 8 seconds after you put it on your target.

-------------------------
2 - Build Out
-------------------------
-Runes
-Masteries
-Summoner Skills
-Skill Order
-------------------------

Skill Build
Pretty self-explanatory really. R > E > W > Q
You need 1 point in everything by level 4 for getting shield up as fast as you can.

1. Siphon of Destruction
2. Mace of Spades
3. Siphon of Destruction
4. Creeping Death
5. Siphon of Destruction
6. Children of the Grave
7. Siphon of Destruction
8. Creeping Death
9. Siphon of Destruction
10. Creeping Death
11. Children of the Grave
12. Creeping Death
13. Creeping Death
14. Mace of Spades
15. Mace of Spades
16. Children of the Grave
17. Mace of Spades
18. Mace of Spades

Summoner Spells
Really in my opinion there is only one way to go. Most people would agree with me.
Ghost + Ignite.

Ignite: This ability is a MUST have on Mordekaiser. It works fantastically with Mordekaiser's ultimate for devastating effect. Don't let anyone change it for anything. (Not even Meres. Bastard)

Ghost: Take it. Makes it so much easier to chase things and the length of it is really nice in teamfights. Much prefer it to alternatives like Flash/Exhaust.

If you are desperate not to take Ghost, make sure you get something to catch and keep up with your enemies with. While Cleanse might be helpful from getting you out of trouble, Mordekaiser is a slow beast. Not enough mobility to run it.

Runes
Runes are the one are I actually think there are a lot of sensible choices. While there is a set that I would always tend to use over the rest, I think there are a lot of sensible options.

Marks: Magic Penetration.

Seals: Health/lvl, Health Regen/lvl, Dodge are all sensible choices.

Glyphs: Cooldown Reduction/lvl are probably my favourite. You level very quickly which is why I prefer them to the flat ones.

Quintessence: Flat Heath are what I run but again anything that seems to suit you will probably be ok.

Masteries
I disagree with most players on this. I run my masteries as 21/0/9 very offensively. I believe you need that extra boost to your damage and I don't believe it compromises that much of your tankyness.

Utility is an option just for the reduced CD on ignite.

My talent tree:

Morde 21/0/9 Mastery Tree

Don't really know what else to say about that. This is what suits my playstyle best. If you search for my profile (Sallah) my Morde rune page is labelled as such on the first page.

--------------------------------
3- Playstyle
--------------------------------

I have split this bit up into three sections: The Basics which is just a run down on how to play Mordekaiser to a decent level, Intermediate Play in which talk about some finer aspects and then Advanced Play where I'll just discuss some tips and tricks that people might not know or have thought about before.

--------------------------------

The Basics:
Before I get onto the more interesting aspects I feel it's important to review the core basics of how to play decently. If you feel comfortable with Morde as a character, skip this bit.

The Laning Phase
When I am at champion select I try to convince people to let me get a solo lane. Morde is a bit of a pain to lane with sometimes especially with a good enemy jungler who is going to punish you for being overextended. Not saying it's bad to duo-lane as Morde by any means, especially with some nice combos like with Morgana it can work very well, it just limits your farm somewhat and it doesn't suit my Morde playstyle so well. Try it out, see what works for you, but I would encourage you to try and grab a solo lane and preferably Mid at that. (Will explain later).

While you are laning, you want to try and be in the position of control. You want to try to have your shield as full as possible and you want to be harassing the enemy champions to stop them farming well and maybe even scoring some early kills.

To do this you want to spam your E - Soul Siphon as much as possible. Use it first and foremost for your shield but if you have shield when it comes of cd, get using it as a harass. You want to keep people from farming without really being a position of danger ever. You will find over time that, especially with the squishier champions, they get shut down very quickly by 4-5 Siphons because they become too scared to come out at all.

Farming is what Morde was built for. As soon as you hit 4, you can demolish (and I recommend you do) the caster creeps every wave just by using one of each of your skills. Don't be afraid to spam your abilities to get creep kills, Morde thrives mainly on farm. No matter what else happens, if you rack up 300 creep kills, you are a force to be reckoned with.

If you are soloing middle and your team (or their team) doesn't have a jungler, you can use this to great advantage on Morde. The Wraith camps that spawn on either side of the middle lane are free experience and gold from level 3-4 onward (recommend 4). Put W on, 1 q, 1 e and 1 auto attack on the big creep and they are dead. Keep farming them every time they are up and you aren't going to waste your lane experience.

So, you've got the hang of it so far and you just hit 6. You can really start looking for kills. You are up against say, an Ashe who should now be sitting on about 400 or so health. Essentially, Morde has trouble getting too close but you don't need to be that close. You will find that people make it very difficult for you to get to them once they realise they are in danger. If you've gone back once already you could probably dive them straight through a tower popping a ghost or a flash but thats probably no fun at all.

Tip:
Pretend you are just sitting their farming at the back of their creeps, they almost always let their guard down.

Then hit them with a Siphon and drop your ignite on them. Watch them run and put your ult on them last as they run to inevitable death. You now have a nice ghost to use to take down the early tower.

Will post some videos on this soon to show you what I mean.

Mid Game and Teamfights
Hopefully by now you have gotten a good chunk of gear and you are looking pretty scary and pretty tanky. If you have had a solo lane and have been farming decently enough you have a good 2-3 levels on their solo and a nice 4-5 levels on the rest of their team. This is really the time to push your advantage.

Try to get a red rune. I cannot stress this enough. Especially if you follow my build instructions as per below, you probably won't have a phage yet and have no slow. You have a level advantage on everyone, red rune does damage based on YOUR level and the slow is devastating. If you have this going into a teamfight, I favour you. It is a toss-up who needs it more depending on who is more fed, you or your hard physical carry, normally it would be you at this point.

Essentially now you are tanky enough to take a lot of damage, especially with your level advantage. You should be charging straight at their carry, probably their ranged physical carry, popping everything you have on him, siphon him, have shield on you and Q him for all you've got, hopefully you see he's lowish and you just ignite him and ult him to death. At this point you turn around, with your ranged physical pet (which you control with alt + click) and just obliterate everything. Your pet has red rune at this point and has so much physical damage (extra from you) you just 3-4 shot things with it.

Late Game
If the game has lasted this long, you might have lost a bit of your edge. People have caught up on levels and you aren't quite as tanky as you once were. Hopefully by this point you will have a Frozen Mallet and a Guardian Angel. Your job in team fights is to get a ranged physical pet and just try and keep as much of the damage off your carries as possible. Good teams will just ignore you and with your real lack of cc you can't do much about that but hey, you still do some damage to squishies...

Run in there, grab your pet of choice and slow and damage everything that will inevitably be chasing the limping remains of your team around... Make sure you are using your pet to attack what you want it to be on (more squishy things) with Alt + Click.

Red buffs at this point really shouldn't be on you if you have a decently farmed ranged physical carry. Even though they are good for you. A ranged guy can apply it from miles further than you can and the extra true damage and slow will help vs a lot of things for them.

That pretty much wraps up my basic rundown of what Mordekaiser consists of. If you are new to him, focus on the above before thinking about anything else.

----------------------------------------------

Intermediate Play:
What I consider as the most important thing about playing a decent Mordekaiser is your position in a team. It is integral to understand what not to do even if it might seem just so tempting.

First off, as you know, you do not have a build in crowd control or slow to speak of. This is the one thing keeping Mordekaiser from being actually overpowered. This makes it possible for the other team to just kite/cc/slow you all the way through a fight. You are tanky as Morde but it's your shield that makes you so much stronger. If you can't gen it back you are essentially a sitting duck. I can't count the number of times a good ashe has just kept me away from the team while they either nuke me down or just plain ignore me because I cannot get close.

Early on you feel very tanky (after about level 5) but realistically decent players will just nuke you down slowly with a consistent cc/slow keeping them off you. So you need to pick your moments well. You are tanky. You do do a lot of damage. And as before, because of your farm, you should have a bit of a headstart on gear and hopefully levels as well. Ideally for Morde, the game starts teamfighting early, when you, then solo, has just hit 11 and the rest of them are bumbling about at 8-9.

If they nuke and focus you, that is great, they'll take some time to kill you, but you rely on your team to be doing something because realistically you aren't doing much with enough cc poured into you. If not, you should pop your ghost very early, run straight to their carry and blow him up. Don't use your ignite + ult combo unless your sure its going to die.

Once you have your pet your main priority is saving teammates. If you have a red rune, forget them, just romp the enemy team. You will just wreck everything to be frank. But your ghost is probably about to run out so run to your effectively last target in the teamfight before you lose your awesome speed and get the touch of slow on it.

Key things you want to avoid when you're playing Morde:
- Engaging without your teammates.
You are strong, sure, but you will quickly find that if you just press your advantage with your teammates you are pretty guaranteed not to lose and throw your advantage. It is not sensible to be overextended no matter how strong you are if their team is missing... You can be as fed as you like. 1v3, 1v4 and even worse 1v5 they are almost certainly still going to beat you. It is just wasteful.

- Gearing against the wrong things
So this guide is built around the assumption you are building resist tank/carry Mordekaiser. If you killed Annie at mid but their MF just got a double kill from your bottom lane, do not build Magic Resist. Make sure your gear choices reflect the issues with the enemy team's damage. Of course build both but focus first and foremost on the ones that are going to cause you issues.

- Get greedy in teamfights
It often happens in teamfights that you might have misjudged it a tiny bit and the enemy Tristana/Ezreal is able to jump and flash away on 10 hp. You have two options now, rejoin the teamfight and help your team in a 5v4 situation or chase miles away from your team to MAYBE pick up the kill. We all know its tempting but make the right choices. It is no good getting the ezreal kill and your team getting destroyed by that rogue Xin that noone could deal with but you.

- Be afraid
Often as Morde I find myself halfway through a teamfight with 200 health, some shield and a pet. You have two choices, run for the hills or push them hard. I implore you to stay and fight to the bitter end. Not always obviously but it normally happens that you picked up their carry and the rest of their team is a mix of support or underfed dps. You have a pet to destroy them with and as long as you are in their face they aren't going to be able to do much. Remember that you really are quite strong. If Yi jumps to you full health and you are on 100 hp, you aren't getting away from that. Fight, pop everything to stay alive, make sure your Siphon hits as many targets as you can, that shield might save you but make you sure you fight him right from the off.

- Forget your active items (mainly Randuin's)
People miss out on the incredible active on Randuin's a shocking amount of the time. When you are near some/all of their damage dealers. Pop it. Think Frozen Heart but better and active. That's how much it changes the teamfights.

Essentially what I'm trying to say is that remember that you are not a tank, you aren't going to be able to save people most of the time unless you have a red rune and even then... You don't have anything to close the gap except your ghost and Randuin's so please use them wisely. Know that without your ignite, your power is much weakened. Play as a team member, not some rogue assassin.

------------------------------

Advanced Play:
For this bit, I will skip all the frills and just relay some cool ideas. Most of these ideas involve your pet and nice things you can do with it.

- Pet Tower Tanking
So you got your pet and you are using it to take your tower very early on, great. It won't quite get you the whole tower because a level 5 Ashe isn't exactly the best tower tank. Fine. When it drops to a couple of hits, move the pet away from the tower range until it changes target to a creep. Then it move it back in to shoot. The tower will normally just jump between creeps (10% of the time, and can't work out when, it jumps back to Ashe after that creep). This way you get the whole of the remaining time as more than double damage to the tower.

- Pet Tower Diving
So you have your pet and red rune but the remaining members of the enemy team are just hiding behind that tower. You get your pet to start attacking one of them and it starts doing crazy damage to them. But the tower is going to kill it. Move just in range of the tower, and the tower will instantly target you and leave your pet to go kill whatever you choose. Move back out when you're bidding is done.

- Pet Range
If you had your pet shooting something else in a teamfight that dropped really low and started to run away. Your pet is going to kill it but is about as far from you as it can be without being pulled back. Chase it. Make sure you run after them to stop your pet getting too far away and losing you the kill.

- Invisible Checking
So you think Teemo has just stealthed in that bush next to you. Spam siphon and shield around it. If shield goes up, there's something there. Simples.

- Recalling
Sometimes, it can be safer to recall than to run. Make sure you grab a full shield from the creeps next to you before going into bush and recalling. Even if they hit you, it won't break recalling as long as it doesn't break shield. Similarly, you can be taking jungle creeps with Creeping Death around you and just recall. Creeping Death will finish off the creeps and you'll save a few seconds.

So that's pretty much it I think, will add more things when I think about them

----------------------
4- Item Build
----------------------

My build choices reflect the fact that all of your resistances apply on your shield which you can regen quickly in battle. This makes resist stacking much more viable than health or anything else for Mordekaiser, even with the changes to Armor and Magic Penetration.


Starting Items:
Rejuv Beads + 6 Health Pots.

Early on, you need the 6 health potions before you go back. You haven't built any resist items yet so you are still a squishy shell of a Morde. Don't be afraid to spam those pots.


First Return Trip (Normally try to hold on for 1450):
Warden's Mail + Boots of Speed.

Warden's Mail throws in a HUGE chunk of health regen and armor and a fantastic passive. That slow is really crazy sometimes at helping you engage with some ranged people.

Boots Choices:
Sorc Shoes (+Magic Pen) - a solid choice for maximising your damage output.
Merc Treads (+MR -CC time) - the most tanky by far and especially now with a lot of cc on most teams, imo, the best.
Speed Boots (+3 speed) - Morde is a slow beast. Making him faster can only be good.


I almost always build those two trips first. After that I build quite sensibly countering whatever damage they tend to have. Focus on Building Armor and Magic Resist Items mainly the following:

Randuin's Omen
Force of Nature
Guardian Angel
Thornmail
Banshee's Veil
Frozen Heart (sometimes)

Now, somewhere within that, you are going to need a slowing item. I much prefer the Frozen Mallet (or sometimes just keeping a phage is good) to Rylai's Sceptre but actually its a personal choice thing.


Things to watch out for to change your build:

True Damage Dealers: Olaf and Cho'Gath:
I hate true damage dealers as Morde. These two are the worst people to see against you. Seriously change your build to include a lot more health items.

Full Magical / Full Physical Team:
You don't need magic resist if they have no magic dealers. Rush Randiun's / Thornmail asap. Similarly with full magical: Rush FoN and Banshee's.

Lots of Tank on YOUR Team:
If you are lacking some damage on your team and have 2-3 tanks on your team, get some magic pen. Get Sorc shoes and then some more magic pen. Don't Sacrifice too much tank but you get the idea.


In all honesty, this build works fantastically early and all the way up to quite late game when their carries really have built up a lot and have some fantastic penetration items between them. By that point, you have a lot of money and might think about switching out some items for some more health and some nice potions.

-----------------------------
5 - Videos and Links
-----------------------------

Have a lot of my Mordekaiser games frapsed. Will be updating this section as soon as I get home (1st Oct 2010).

----------------------------


Apologies for the gargantuan length and hope it helped you.

Sallah

Finally ready after about a billion edits. Read and comment please

Sallah

When i read it ill let ya knowz !

Ernil wrote:

When i read it ill let ya knowz !

Ernil, how long would you like to read it? Gah. Want decent feedback before I add my videos and then do a video guide when I get back.

when i feel that there is nothing left in the world and im insanly bored ill get round to reading this

Booshido wrote:

when i feel that there is nothing left in the world and im insanly bored ill get round to reading this

It's ok, I'll turn it into a video guide soon enough so you won't have to suffer. Leave that fate to ernil.

Video guides seem awesome. Will have to give that a try myself!

Achilles wrote:

Video guides seem awesome. Will have to give that a try myself!

Torrent fraps Achilles...